What unites a murdered American ambassador with a fourteen-year-old educationally sub-normal girl in Pakistan? Very little, apart from the fact that they are the victims of ignorant fanatics.

The murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi called to mind one of my previous BrooWaha articles on Libya (Making war on the Dead, March 14, 2012). I never believed in the fake promise of the Arab Spring. Let me be even more frank: these people are incapable of freedom. They are immersed, they will always be immersed, in darkness, hysteria and fanaticism. Let me remind you of some of my previous words:

Why, oh why, I continually ask myself, did the West ever get involved in wretched palaces like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya?Why did we not just leave the people in these dreadful countries to get on with their own clannish and debased lives? We wasted precious blood and we wasted precious resources in gifting ‘freedom’ that is no freedom. All we have done is uncork the bottle, letting out the genie of ignorant fanaticism.

And so it goes on, screaming in Egypt, murder in Libya. I would ask you not to be deluded by the speculation that the latest rampage was caused by The Innocence of Muslims, a silly satire on the life of the Prophet Mohammed. The attack on the consulate in Benghazi was clearly planned well in advance. Protestors do not as a rule come armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

There is a terrible irony in this, considering that Chris Stevens was fully behind the ousting last year of Colonel Gaddafi, fully behind the attempts to ‘liberate’ Libya. He was guilty of no crime; he had shown nothing but friendship. This is his return.

Innocence or guilt, what does that matter when the ignorant have made up their minds? Chris Stevens is dead. In Pakistan, Rimsha Masih, a fourteen-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome, is living in fear of her life. They hate her, for she is a Christian. They hate her even more because she is alleged to have burned pages from the Quran.

She was arrested earlier this year under that country’s ferocious blasphemy laws, though the evidence against her was highly dubious, resting on no more than her own ‘confession’. Recently released on bail, she and her family are now in hiding. Their Muslim neighbours had already threatened to burn them alive. According to her father, an illiterate house painter, they were saying;

We are going to burn you inside the house. We are not going to spare you or your kids. Then we will burn the homes of the other Christians. Bring the girl and the family to us. We want to kill them.

This in the name of God. It’s all an excuse, of course, a reason for attacking Pakistan’s beleaguered Christian minority. It makes no difference that a local imam has been arrested, accused of fabricating evidence against the girl. His own deputy claimed the imam had added pages from the Quran to a bag full of ashes allegedly discarded by Rimsha.

What do inconvenient facts like facts matter? For many, accusation here is enough; she is guilty because she is a Christian. Even if the case is dropped, the suggestion of blasphemy is likely to hang around this unfortunate girl, also illiterate, for the remainder of her life.

In Libya the day after the attack on the Benghazi consulate a spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia, an extremist group, announced that “Mockery of Sharia and the Prophet should be met forcefully. This is a popular uprising where all Libyan people have come forward to make victorious the religion of Allah.”

There is no evidence at all that Chris Stevens personally had mocked Islam and Islamic law. No, he was just there, a convenient target, his innocence or guilt wholly irrelevant. An American ambassador and a Pakistani teenager with Down’s syndrome, two people as far apart in this life as can be imagined. But they are united as the victims of ugly extremism and blind ignorance, evils that hide under the mask of faith.

It sounds like the Christian witch hunting. If you were suspected to be a witch, you would be thrown in the pond. If you drowned, you were cleared of all guilt. If you survived, however, you were surely a witch, and thus burnt alive.

In line of duty Chris Stevens and his other colleagues died...I salute the departed souls who unmindful of consequences carried out their duties till last...May their soul rest in peace. Again in the name of God they killed...what the hell is going on...Killing innocent people is what they call their religion preach...I don't think so...So cruel they can be...They are after everybody...Anastasia we need to flex our muscles to contain such extremist elements

OMG you say the things I think but am afraid to say. Under the guise of political correctness we excuse horrific behavior on the part of Arab citizens/nations. Do other more "rational" Arabs or Muslims denounce the acts of their insane brethren? No, they do not. I hope it's fear; not that they silently agree.

I will say it: perhaps not in the Quran, but in practice, Islam is a warlike religion.

The little girl in Pakistan is just an excuse to continue murder and mayhem as a lifestyle. The decadence of the West that "provokes" Islamic terrorism is just a excuse to live murder and mayhem as a lifestyle. (The terrorists are quite happy to use all the technology of the decadent west to carry out their actions)

These people are not ready for democracy, or any other kind of rational existence. We should leave them alone to evolve or die.

"Rimsha Masih, a fourteen-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome, is living in fear of her life. They hate her, for she is a Christian. They hate her even more because she is alleged to have burned pages from the Quran."

This is abhorrent. It would be abhorrent if Christians hated a fourteen year old Muslim girl and put her in fear for her life.

The killing of Ambassador Steverns and his foreign service colleagues is abhorrent and it would be no less abhorrent if the terrorists who killed them were Christains, Sikhs, Jains, agnostics or secular humanists.

Throughout history and throughout the world murderous thugs have used some creed to justify their heinous acts.

Evil is evil no matter what nonsencial rationalization if offered for it.